It’s Time to Get Behind the Semantic Web

My 2005 interview had two foci: the importance of Berners-Lee’s vision of the Semantic Web becoming a reality, and the very substantial impediments to that happening. In my interview, I returned again and again to the latter issue.

What were those impediments? Back in June of 2005, simply understanding what the Semantic Web was all about was a real problem; proponents found it hard to articulate its operations and uses in a way that people could get their minds around. More seriously, though, was the amount of effort that implementing the W3C’s core Semantic Web standards would take, conjoined with the absence of clear examples of what kind of rewards would follow for those that took up this burden. In effect, there was not only a chicken and egg issue, but an absence of people interested in buying either the bird or the egg.

Five years on, the first issue has largely disappeared. People now “get” what the Semantic Web is about, if only because their new smart phone apps show them (for example) how handy it can be to know what types of stores are where, what you can buy at which ones, and what the prices will be when you get there (whether or not Semantic Web standards were actually used to provide that information). The profit potential, though, has remained an issue.

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